Wild Rose (25 page)

Midway between the livery stable and the blacksmith shop, but back from it, stood the new dwelling Sophie had noticed the day before, with its lace-curtained windows on either side of the front door, and two upstairs not quite evenly spaced, as if the builder was an incompetent or had played a practical joke, giving the house a slightly comical air, or an aura of things in a general way being askew. Facing the row of businesses, on the west side of the street, were a few more small frame houses, standing with their backs to the backs of the few houses on the other street. One of these was also a two-story, and therefore larger than the others. Sophie thought at once that it must be the Archibald’s, because of its freshly-painted white and blue – none of the other buildings had ever been painted – and its verandah on two sides with turned, white-painted poles supporting its low roof, and gingerbread trim in the eaves of both the verandah and the house proper. Shrubs were planted out front, too, and a row of parched-looking little yellow flowers marched up either side of the narrow boardwalk that ran straight from the gate to the steps leading onto the verandah.

Not a soul was about, the men all out on their land seeing to the harvest, or else at work at various jobs, the women either with them or preparing food in their kitchens, minding children, taking a few minutes for a rest on this stifling hot afternoon. Where were the children? She supposed they were with their fathers running errands, or working with their mothers in the kitchen. When evening came and the day cooled, she told herself, people will be out, calling to each other over fences, working in the gardens, dropping into each other’s houses for visits. For now, she was glad she could see no one on the streets or in the yards.

At breakfast she’d heard one of the men say that the evening before some wagon loads of Indians had come through town, stopping for the night in the coulee, looking for water there and maybe getting some game. Heading on into the hills they supposed, maybe a big powwow going on there, although they doubted the Mounties would allow that, and where was Constable McMann when you needed him, at which Wetherell had snorted loudly without speaking. Now she saw no trace of them, or of the fact that they had come through town, and she began to catch a glimmer of what Wetherell was, why he seemed to hate all of them. He thought
he
was the real West, she told herself, and we are all interlopers.

That there was no church eased her mind; as long as there wasn’t a church to go to, she didn’t have to battle with herself over it. She thought of her grandfather’s pain when his beloved younger brother had died, and the entire household was in deep mourning, and the priest had come and locked himself and her grandfather in his study with the pearl and gold cross hanging over the desk and the shelves of religious books, her grandmother walking about tight faced, pale, her lips constantly moving in prayer as she fingered her rosary, unaccountably not seeing Sophie as she slipped by. She would not soon forget her grandfather’s pain, visible even to her, a child, and a few years later when she at last understood why the priest had come, and that finally her grandfather had acquiesced to the church’s decree that his brother couldn’t be buried in consecrated ground, the ground under her feet had shifted, just a little, and on that matter, had not yet righted itself. It was better there was no church in Bone Pile; she didn’t think she could walk through the door of a church again now that she had some idea of the freedom without one or without a priest keeping a watchful eye on her every move.

She caught up with Charles, took his hand, and travelling at his speed, moved the short distance east across the rough trail to the main street, and then up it toward the livery barn, although her actual destination was Mr. Archibald’s office across the street. She was deliberately taking a round-about route in order to think of precisely how she would broach the subject of selling her jewellery.

Just as Sophie was about to cross the street to the eastern side, ahead of her, the door of the new house opened and a woman stepped out onto the short strip of boardwalk that fronted it. She hesitated, then turned in Sophie’s direction, crossed the street to the side where Sophie moved at a snail’s pace with her child, mounted the boardwalk there, and began to walk toward her. She was tall, her buxomness accented by her tightly-laced stays, clad in a mutton-sleeve blouse and a skirt, similar to the ones Sophie wore. But Sophie’s were once bright blue, now faded by washing to a blue-tinged grey, while the stranger’s blouse was made of a light fabric, dimity perhaps, and narrowly striped in yellow and brown, her skirt of a heavier fabric in light brown, both skirt and blouse crisp and fresh-looking, their hues still bold. Around her waist she had tied a bright blue satin sash whose ends hung down nearly to her knees. On her head was a large hat, on the brim of which bright yellow and blue silk flowers rode, quivering with each confident stride. Perambulating as she was through the dust and heat of this wilderness village, she was a startling figure.

Now Sophie saw that she was a redhead, her hair carefully pulled back from her face and piled in intricate curls the hat only partly covered. The hair colour, Sophie noticed, was far too bright. As they met and passed the woman glanced at her, offering her a slight smile, and Sophie, at the same time as she smiled in reply, seeing the woman wasn’t as young as her figure, her costume, or her hair suggested, and realized with a start that this was the village’s
putain
, its fallen woman, surely the one Pierre had mentioned as they lay in their bed after lovemaking, whispering softly to each so as not to wake the baby. “Adelaide,” he said. “They tell me her name is Adelaide.”

“She has no last name?”

“She calls herself ‘Smith,’” he said. “Nobody knows where she comes from and she refuses to say.” For some reason, Sophie thought of the two women, sisters, who had sat across from them so briefly on the train west.

“But, is she pretty?” she had asked, puzzled why any woman would do such a thing if it weren’t out of immediate need.

“If she weren’t,” Pierre said, yawning, “who would go with her?” Sophie had been too shocked to say anything more, and Pierre had soon drifted into sleep.

They passed, not speaking, the showily-dressed prostitute, and the younger, prettier, but drably-dressed homesteader. Around the village the prairie danced, soft aquamarine and the palest yellow, and glistened in the great heat of the early afternoon, the sky retreating far above them, pale as the last crocus. Sophie did not change her pace, crossed the rough street carefully, while the other woman kept going toward the south, apparently just out for a stroll. Sophie wondered if this was why the woman chose such an uncomfortable time for strolling – she herself preferred the much cooler evening – because now no one would accost her. Then she thought, a little shocked, and her work is at night. And yet, from the moment she and Charles had left the boarding house Sophie had had a sense of being watched, and she thought that behind the drawn curtains of the town’s few houses people were curious, taking note, for all she knew where Adelaide was concerned, cursing her.

She lifted Charles into her arms despite his protests, and walked faster, careful not to look back, although she wanted to. But even as she began to walk toward the barber shop and the lawyer’s office above it, the two women she had met on the train west came into her mind: sisters, they had said, going west to join their brother who had a homestead, the location of which they said they knew only vaguely. Sophie was vague herself about precisely where she and Pierre were going – but now she knew that the two women, whether sisters or not, were prostitutes, heading West to ply their trade. She would have thought more about this, but the nearer she drew to the lawyer’s office, the harder it was to think of anything but the task before her.

She mounted the stairs doggedly not glancing around, because anyone could see her and would know she was seeing the lawyer, and would take it for granted they knew why, that one way or another she was trying to salvage something from her humiliation. She continued to carry Charles, shifting him to her other hip as she climbed, and at the top, opened the screen door, entered the lawyer’s waiting room, letting the door close behind her with a light clap that would announce her presence. Setting Charles down, she waited. A moment passed before Mr. Archibald opened his office door and peered out.

“Mrs. Hippolyte, good afternoon,” he said, coming forward. “I thought I heard someone. Such a warm day, I hope you are not fatigued from your walk, and with the little one.” Charles stared gravely up at the lawyer.

“I have come for advice, Monsieur – Mr. Archibald,” Sophie told him. “I have no money with which to pay you –” she had not meant to say that, “but – it is only an inquiry, in any case.”

“Come in,” he said, his face composing itself into professional courtesy, standing aside so she might pass into his office. “Please, do sit,” he said, indicating the same chair in which she had briefly sat the afternoon before. She had forgotten Charles, but he had followed them in and now was at her knee, asking to be lifted. She picked him up and then sat gratefully in the rich brown leather chair with its decorative brass studding that she hadn’t so much as seen the day before even when she sat in it. He went around his desk and sat down too, and waited, while Sophie, casting about for the right words, stared at his gleaming oak desktop that hadn’t so much as a fingerprint on its surface.

“May I ask for your silence on this matter?” she said at last.

“I am a lawyer,” Mr. Archibald said. “Not even Mrs. Archibald is privy to what goes on behind this door.”

“I am – destitute, Monsieur,” she said. Then added hastily, “I have not come for a loan of money –”

He interrupted, “Surely, your family –”

“I choose not to ask,” Sophie said. “My parents are dead. There is no one else.” She chose not to mention who had raised her, nor her brothers; she would never tell them, especially not Guillaume, what had happened; it would just be adding fuel to the fire of his rage at her. Mr. Archibald murmured something politely that she couldn’t make out, then cleared his throat in an embarrassed way. “I must wait for my husband to remember his duty and send me money for his son, if not for me.” She was about to go on, when he interrupted her.

“I might be able to help you.” He leaned forward, his elbows resting on his shiny desk, making a tent with his clean white fingers. “My wife is…not strong. Perhaps you would be interested in…ah…a position as her, shall we say, housekeeper? Her,” he paused, “maid?”

“Oh, sir!” Sophie said, without even thinking. “I could never…” Never what? Never be someone’s ‘maid?’ Even desperate as she was? Or was it that she would be too humiliated to live with the family as a maid, in a house not as nice as the one in which she’d been raised? In a tiny attic room? And what about Charles?

He said, as if she had said Charles’s name out loud, “I’d forgotten you have a child. Mrs. Archibald would no doubt find the noise too difficult. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. I should try to find her a young, unmarried girl, perhaps. Forgive me,” he said to Sophie, seeing perhaps, the strong emotion on her face, and misreading it.

“I...thank you for offering me work,” Sophie managed to say. “You are right – small children can be very noisy.” She could barely speak, trying to grasp that she had fallen so far as to be maid material. She said nothing about working for Mrs. Emery; everyone in town would know that, or would expect it. There was nowhere else for a decent woman to go.

“And the room we have wouldn't be big enough for both of you in any case.”

This didn't require a reply. Speaking haltingly out of her embarrassment, forcing herself to go on, she said, “I have come to ask you for advice as to who might wish to buy – might have sufficient funds – to buy a few of my – trinkets,” here she dropped her eyes, “So that I might begin to make a fund of money, for Charles and myself.”

She wasn’t too upset to perceive the slight relaxation of the stiffness in his shoulder. She said no more, keeping her eyes on the pronounced grain of the oak desk between them. “These, ah, trinkets? They are?” he asked.

Inadvertently Sophie touched an earring. Mr. Archibald’s eyes followed her hand and light came up in them when he saw the small jewels in her ears.

“No, no, not my earrings, or at least, not yet,” she told him, and heard herself laugh, a sound which she shut off at once. She reached into her pocket, taking out the two cloth-wrapped pieces, set them on the desk between them, putting Charles down again so that she might unwrap them.

“Trinkets,” she said, apologetically, “but not easy to buy out here.” He gazed at her treasures. “This brooch is perhaps not valuable. This ring.” She did not say, my wedding ring, but saw the lawyer glance at her hand.

“I must say, Mrs. Hippolyte, if you’ll forgive me, that perhaps it’s not the best way to bargain by saying that the things you have are not valuable.” Smiling, he reached for the brooch and lifted it, raising his eyebrows as he did so. “Gold, of course,” he said. Sophie didn’t answer, but thought that perhaps the setting really was gold, although at this moment she suddenly doubted it. As for the stones, she didn’t know, but following his good advice, kept silent.

“I believe my wife would like this brooch. It’s very pretty. Just the other day she remarked –” He broke off. “I’m not well-versed in the value of jewellery.” She held her breath; even Charles was silent and motionless, as if he, too, felt the weight of this moment.

She said, apologetically, “It was a wedding gift –”